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Offline

My friends
know that I am likely to be the last person to respond to a Snapchat message.
This is because I don’t have notifications on my Snapchat, and I don’t check it
every day. I simply get more stressed out from having notifications on Snapchat
than I find it amusing to see all the snaps the minute I receive them. It’s not that
I don’t like Snapchat, I just see it more as an entertaining device when I don’t
have anything else to do rather than a communication device for normal
conversations. I almost always leave my phone at home when Simay and I are
going sightseeing in Istanbul, simply because I’m not using my phone when I’m
in Turkey. The sense of freedom I get when I don’t have my phone on me is
something you don’t get that easy in today’s daily life. The multiple benefits of going so called offline have been documented; everything from better sleep (as you don’t stay up to scroll through your
phone), higher quality relationships, to stop procrastinating.

One of my
professors at ESSEC told us to give ourselves a break from technology for 3
hours during his classes. He asked us to put our phones in our bags and only
use the computer if we were taking notes, nothing else. In my opinion this is something
that shouldn’t have to be said, but it is. Students stay on their phones and
scroll through different sites on their computers all the time during class,
and I get that if you have mandatory class attendance but you don’t really care
about the class it can be easy to do that, or if you have something urgent that
has to be fixed. But it can’t be the case that everyone hates the class, can
it? If you are there to learn what the professor is talking about, then paying
attention and not doing other things should be the natural choice, in my opinion.
Studies have shown that taking notes the traditional way, with pen and paper,
makes you remember more of the things that were said. So why would you spend 3
hours in a classroom if you’re not going to remember as much as possible from
that class. Whatever you did on your computer will still be there when the class
is over, but the professor won’t repeat what he or she said. That is unless
your university records all the classes, but then again, why would you go
through the same class over again just because you didn’t pay attention
the first time? If you paid attention, but still need to go through the class
again at least you know where the professor was mentioning what you are looking
for, thus you dont have to go through the whole 3 hours.

Another
huge benefit of not being online 24/7 is the quality of the human interaction
and relationship you create with others. I remember one time I was having lunch
with my mom in a park here in Paris, and there was a school class that were having a
long break as well. They had one phone to control the music that they were
playing on a speaker, other than that none of the kids had their phones up.
These kids were probably something between 14-16 years old, and to see kids
their age not being online but actually talking to each other and creating
memories together rather than taking pictures and videos of how much fun they
were having really stuck in my memory. Because I know that the chances of me seeing
that back in Norway are quite slim. I personally think that they would appreciate
that memory more as they probably have stories to tell about what happened or
what they were talking about, rather than having a picture of every minute they
spent in the park. Of course, take a picture or two to keep in the scrapbook but other than that taking the time to talk to each other will be better in my opinion.

I am not
saying that I wished everyone would go offline, I love the fact that I can talk
to all of my friends and family back home just by touching a screen 2-3 times,
but I do hope that as time goes on we’ll take a small step back and say:
Technology is awesome, but I also want to talk to real people, create real
relationships (Not just Facebook and Instagram relationships), pay the
professor the respect he or she deserves, and keep my phone in my pocket
sometimes not always in my hand.